The Flame Trees of Thika (42 page)

‘Now Humphrey’s got the baby on his hands,’ Tilly continued, talking more to herself than to me. ‘He can’t find anyone to look after it, wounded soldiers are more in fashion now than babies; I offered to take it home with me, but he wants to keep it here….’

That was just like Tilly; starting next morning for a voyage on a cargo-boat with an unknown destiny ahead of her, and no preparations, she was quite willing to include a new-born baby among her kit. Mrs Pascoe had taken it in for the time being, and Bay as well, among her abandoned pets and salvaged animals, while Humphrey looked for someone in Nairobi to return with
him to Molo. Kate’s death had shattered him; he was like a tree whose tap-root has been cut, or a broken-winged hawk. Even the water-furrows had been made for Kate, as other men would bring fine clothes or jewellery.

He came to see us off for Mombasa next day, and busied himself getting our luggage into place. Every corner of the train was occupied; so packed were the native coaches that you could hardly see the woodwork, people were like bunches of human bananas attached to a wooden stem. It seemed impossible that even one extra body could be squeezed in, but travellers kept arriving and somehow penetrating inside. We had our food with us in baskets, and bottles of soda-water for drinking and for cleaning our teeth.

‘Will you be seeing Lettice,’ Humphrey asked, ‘when you get home?’

Tilly said that she would.

‘Then give her this.’ Humphrey thrust a package into her hand. ‘It was Ian’s. She might like something of his.’ It was his watch, as we saw later: a gold half-hunter, thinner than a penny-piece and engraved with his monogram. It was something she could treasure, if she felt so inclined. But it was a question whether Africans were not wiser to burn everything a dead person had owned and keep no memorial, nor try to cultivate seeds of immortality in a desert of time.

‘Did Dirk send back the pony?’ I asked Humphrey.

‘No, he took it with him. But he sent a message to say he’d pay me back after the war.’

Humphrey had a thin, brittle look, his eyes were sunken, and did not appear to be taking things in. He moved slowly, like a mechanical man. But he got our luggage on board and paid the ragged, self-appointed porters, and refused to accept Tilly’s change.

‘I think I have found someone for Bay and the baby,’ he said. ‘I think Lois Montagu will come.’

‘But is she giving up wounded soldiers?’

‘The only soldiers she has nursed so far had d.t.s; and she wants to escape from Dick, who keeps turning up in Nairobi and trying to carry her off. She is too young and silly, but for the time being…’

‘If it’s any help, I’ll take the baby, wherever I am.’

‘Thank you, Tilly, I’ll remember that.’

‘Lois may turn out all right, once she has responsibility.’

‘Yes….’

‘The train’s late in starting.’

‘There may have been some trouble down the line.’

At last the whistle blew, flags waved, and they shook hands through the window.

‘My love to Robin.’

‘Write to us sometimes.’

Humphrey nodded, and looked up at her as she peered down from the coach, and for the first time a twinge of life returned to his face. The engine chuffed, people shouted, smoke billowed, the carriage gave a jerk like a twitching muscle. All we could do was to wave at the upright figure standing stiffly on the crowded platform.

We saw him turn and walk away, but had no time to watch him out of sight. Our varied collection of packages had to be reorganized, with the aid of our fellow-passengers, who eyed it with misgiving, especially a bundle done up in sacking from which a pungent odour emerged. This contained home-cured sheepskins Tilly was taking with her to fashion into a warm waistcoat for Robin, a piece of work more suited, she thought, to a Greek cargo-boat in wartime than the bedspread she was embroidering with flowers and birds in fine Chinese silk, and which she had left in the bank, having heard that submarines were sinking ships all over the Mediterranean, and feeling reluctant to risk the loss of something that had cost her so much time and care.

‘I wonder if those skins were properly cured,’ she remarked, inspecting the bundle. ‘If not, they will make their presence felt in the Red Sea.’

I carried the
kiondo
, that soft woven basket Kupanya’s wife had given me, with a number of treasures inside: the stuffed baby crocodile presented to me by Pioneer Mary, my bead necklace, a cardboard box of birds’ eggs, several cocoons in matchboxes, some grenadillas – Kamau’s parting present – from the vine partially covering our kitchen, and Njombo’s gift, the little bead-edged cap made from a sheep’s stomach that I had
so much admired. Sammy’s spear lay in the rack, together with a small native drum, a Kikuyu sword in its vermilion scabbard, a Dorobo bow and arrows, and my favourite hippo-hide riding-whip. It was not until all our hand packages lay around us in the confined space of a railway carriage that Tilly quite realized their number and variety.

‘Do you think’, she inquired, ‘that you will really need all those weapons, as
well
as a drum?’

‘Sammy said I was to kill Germans with the spear, and cut off their heads with the sword.’

‘There are no Germans at your aunt Mildred’s in Porchester Terrace, where we shall stay: only a Belgian refugee.’

I was surprised to see that when she looked out of the window at the retreating wooden shacks and tin roofs of Nairobi, her eyes were red. She delved into her bag, made by an Indian from the skin of the python Robin had shot.

‘All this luggage,’ she remarked glumly, ‘and I seem to have left my hankies behind.’

I was preoccupied with other troubles. A ripe pawpaw someone had given us for the journey had fallen from its basket on the rack into a large pith topee resting on the seat by its owner’s side. He was a red-faced gentleman with bloodshot eyes, generous moustaches, and a neat, compact, and well-disciplined quota of hand luggage, including one of those leather cases, shaped like a coal-scuttle, used to transport top-hats and other headgear of a superior kind. The pawpaw had burst, releasing a cascade of squashy yellow pulp and slimy black seeds, like fish-roe only many times larger. The topee’s owner, who had not yet noticed this accident, coughed and turned his head.

‘Look at that funny animal,’ I cried, pointing out of the window. Everyone turned, but there was nothing to be seen except the plains, green with fresh growth, the tin sheds, a rusty siding, a knot of ragged gangers leaning on their picks, a few waggle-tailed Thomson’s gazelle, a pair of ostriches, and an Indian, obviously a Muslim, squatting with his back to the train.

I made a face at Tilly. She saw the pawpaw, and frowned; we were trapped, the train had no corridor. She did not hesitate; smiling with all her charm, she asked the red-faced gentleman
to help her stow our soda-water bottles on the rack, and in five minutes he was eating out of her hand. I looked through the open window at the undulating purple ridge-back of the Ngong hills, a haunt of lions and buffaloes, and was glad that I had kissed the four walls of the grass hut at Thika, and was bound to return.